Wednesday, May 27, 2009

An Evening Post

No beverage currently at hand--though another glass of sauvignon blanc does appeal--the sound of the Sprout having her nightly long-distance chat with her Daddy for background music. As I have already been utzed, it's Wednesday (late Wednesday) and there has been no post. Pity me. I spent the day at the office of building permits to get a permit for the new studio hotshop. Line outs, and try agains, and barely getting through, Oh My! On the plus side, after seven straight hours, I got the permit approved. On the minus side, I have to go back tomorrow morning because the approval came too late in the day for it to be typed into the system and paid for, i.e., permitted.

Yesterday saw the first big melt firing in Bettina--screens and pots and combos, a glorious profusion of flowing glass. The kiln was just now cool enough for me to open it and take out the pieces--and most of the pieces stuck to the shelf and cracked. I have always used Hot Line Hi-Fire Primer whenever I have used kiln wash but the latest batch I have has bubbled and flaked badly as it dried--even before I fired it. So I was leery about using it for this load and used Thinfire instead. Mistake. I had the feeling that Thinfire wasn't made to withstand 1650 degrees F for 90 minutes AND flowing glass, and I was right. I'm glad I wasn't using a vermiculite shelf or it would have been ruined. The Dyson shelf looks like I'll need to rub the surface down a bit, but I think it will be fine.

Tonight I'm doing a flow out (and back together) fuse of all the pieces I can salvage from the load in Bertha. Tomorrow I'll see if a little coldworking pre-slump will fix them up enough to take to Vegas.

Last news of the night: Both the storage unit in Vegas (where I had all the breakage reported last week) and UPS (for the two big panels I shipped to Omaha that were smashed in transit) are going to pay for all damages. Whew! That was almost $2,000 of work lost that I really can't afford to shrug and walk away from.

So the day had ups and downs. I got the Sprout to bed, and now I'm off to clean the kitchen, put away dinner (Melton's buffalo chicken with chipotle blue cheese dressing and fries), take a shower and crash. Tomorrow is set to be an even bigger, busier day, and then off to Vegas!

2 comments:

Bill said...

I'm shocked that you were able to nearly get the permits passed through, unless you get there tomorrow, and they start you on another hamster wheel...

Dee said...

so, how much wine am i buying to celebrate tomorrow night the paying of damages WITHOUT resorting to threats? :))

VIVA LAS VEGAS!